'IAS Officer' Selling Fake TTD Passes Held

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The city police on Tuesday arrested a 35-year-old businessman who posed as an IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre and took priests for a ride by selling them fake passes of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) at a premium.

He confessed to the crime and said he had collected Rs 13 lakh by selling fake tickets. CCS police recovered `6.40 lakh in cash, an Alto car (AP 28 DR 5656) and two phones and two debit cards of Axis Bank from him.

According to police, the fake IAS officer approached priests of religious mathams and sold them fake VIP passes. Narasimhacharyulu, a priest at Jiyaguda, lodged a complaint that he had been cheated.

CCS police launched an investigation and came to know that the accused opened a account with Axis Bank at Himayatnagar in the name of H Venkata Ramana Rao of Allagadda in Kurnool district where he gave his original address. On January 27 the CCS police apprehended him.Investigation revealed that he worked in marketing field for six years in Hyderabad. Later, he started his own business of share trading and finance.

He incurred huge losses and closed down the business. Then, he learned refractory work (heat protection to machinery) at Panyam Cements and worked for six months there.

He visited Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka and worked for JP Cements, Vasava Datta Cements and Bharathi Cements, Reliance, etc and continuing the work but found his income insiufficient to repay lonas.

He was a regular visitor to the TTD for darshan. During his visits, he observed and found that some of his friends visited Tirumala with VIP letters by getting special vastram darshan tickets for about `50,000 each.

He got an idea to earn easy money and hatched the plan to cheat gullible people in the name of providing special tickets by impersonating himself as an IAS officer, SCP (cyber crime) Pala Raju said.